


The Magician's Roommate

by Mdeezy



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Adam is still unknowable, Domestic, M/M, POV Outsider, Post Series, Post canon, college adam, post The Raven King, pynch - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-22
Updated: 2016-08-22
Packaged: 2018-08-10 08:37:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7837894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mdeezy/pseuds/Mdeezy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Keith Holloway had always had a certain idea of what his college experience would be like. Study groups, coffee shops, and maybe the occasional party.</p><p>So far, all of that had been proven correct.</p><p>The one thing he didn’t anticipate, however, was Adam Parrish.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Magician's Roommate

**Author's Note:**

> In other words, Adam's roommate is very confused by this boy, but the soft gay makes it a little better.

Keith Holloway had always had a certain idea of what his college experience would be like. Study groups, coffee shops, and maybe the occasional party. **  
**

So far, all of that had been proven correct.

The one thing he didn’t anticipate, however, was Adam Parrish.

It was impossible for any one man to anticipate Adam Parrish really, because honestly what even was he? Did anyone know? Did Adam?

Keith surmised he was from the south based on accent alone. It was not an obvious thing, but Adam’s words all carried that subtle ring of practiced forgery, and Keith, being both evervigilant and a law student, could hear the occasional vowel overstaying its welcome.

Adam Parrish had arrived at Princeton in possession of a full-ride scholarship, a big brain, and an even bigger work ethic. His hands were weathered, his skin was freckled. His wardrobe repeated weekly and there were permanent bags seated under his eyes.

He was also deaf in one ear.

 _A blow to the head_ , he’d said.

It was gruff, detached, as if the sting of those words had scabbed over long ago.

Keith had accepted this explanation as the truth because he had no particular reason to see it as _untruth_ , but he also innately knew that Adam Parrish was not the fist-fighting type. He was too clever for it. Too cunning. Adam was the type to go right for the killshot, fast and efficient and deadly. He would not waste his time on blunt force trauma. That blow to the head was assigned, not exchanged.

And yet this same boy, a study in survival, both frugal and utilitarian in all other respects, drove around in a shiny BMW and talked late into the night on a tricked out iphone that constantly dropped, but never shattered. A device that Keith saw Adam use almost every single day, but somehow never needed charging. He doubted there was even such a charger in existence. The thing was just _other_. Much like Adam himself.

And the lockscreen photo on said device? A little girl with hooves. Not a cute little cartoon girl or some weird modern art piece, but an actual girl with actual hooves; wide-eyed and toe-head blond. She was looking up at the photographer with open curiosity and an overly large wristwatch pressed to her mouth. She seemed adrift in a landscape of dark leaves and fireflies.

Adam spoke only Latin into this phone. Out loud and unironically. Low and unfaltering, peppered occasionally by names of places and people and stray English words like _blue_ or _chainsaw_.

Adam never breathed any of the words associated with family, but he did not seem unrooted. Quite the contrary actually. Adam Parrish _was_ the root. Hungry, and unapologetic, settling naturally into whatever position he found most beneficial.

He had no adornments displayed on his side of the room save for an inch high stack of unopened letters with foreign postmarks and a single crinkled polaroid taped to the side of his desk beside it. The photo featured him (infinitely more tired), a blond boy (blurred and smudgy), a catalogue model (golf dad chic), a musclebound biker with a chip on one shoulder and giant bird on the other; all of it orchestrated by an eccentrically dressed, spiky-haired girl smiling up at the camera she was holding aloft in front of them.

Adam didn’t talk about these assorted individuals either, though the small space he had carved out for them here was telling enough. Whoever these people were, they were _Adam’s_ people. Possibly his only ones.

They looked like some sort of gang. Maybe a cult.

Probably a cult.

 _Definitely_ a cult.

And that wasn’t even the full extent of the _otherness_ that was Adam Parrish.

Private and potentially cult-ish he could deal with, but sometimes Keith would come back to their room after a long night of studying and find Adam cross-legged in the middle of their floor, staring unblinkingly at a bowl of water with distant and bloodshot eyes.

On such occasions, Adam would always snap out of his trance as soon as Keith passed the threshold, gasping loudly before shuddering back into his skin and smiling softly to himself.

He never offered up an explanation. It was not unkind, nor was it a _refusal_ of an explanation, simply an omission. Keith knew that if he pressed for it Adam would smile and bite back the twang in his voice and happily feed him whatever untruths he wanted to hear.

So Keith hadn’t asked. There was no point to it when the napkin was only a quarter of the way unfolded and the meal yet to be served.

There were also the smaller and eerier details of the matter, like the fact that Adam naturally smelled like pine or freshly cut flowers and that the wind always seemed to whip all plant life in whatever direction he was facing.

And then there was the biggest anomaly.

A boy named Ronan Lynch.

Keith had never given an ounce of thought to Adam’s sexuality—Adam gave him so much else to speculate on—but, had he put proper thought to it, he might have been able to parcel out that Adam Parrish was less than straight.

But he hadn’t.

Instead, he had entered their dorm on a Friday afternoon in November to find a stranger sprawled in Adam’s bed. This stranger was large and imposing, draped in corded muscle and dark clothing. His shaved head rested lightly against the headboard. His knees were bent and spread apart. Between them, sat none other than Adam Parrish himself, back pressed into the other man’s chest, his eyes predictably glued to the book in his hand, oblivious to all else.

There was an easy familiarness about the two of them, and though they were both fully clothed and barely even touching, Keith felt as if he had intruded on a painfully intimate moment.

He hovered in the doorway just a beat too long before speaking.

“Uh, hi,” he said.

“Hey,” Adam said without looking up. “This is Ronan. Don’t try and talk to him. He’s an asshole.”

Ronan smiled wickedly and tightened his arms around Adam’s waist in response. Keith’s eyes caught on the matching leather bracelets circling his wrists and recognized him as the angry bird whisperer from Adam’s polaroid. He looked older and less angry, a little bit looser at the edges, but it was definitely the same person.

“Right,” Keith sighed, emphasizing the ‘i’ as much as possible. He wasn’t really sure if Adam was joking or not, but he set his bag down and silently made for his desk anyway.

“The fuck did you do to your roommate Parrish?” Ronan asked before Keith could sit down.

He turned back to them, curious.

Adam closed his book loudly and heaved a loaded sigh. “What exactly are you implying Ronan?”

Ronan sat up and turned Adam’s jaw so that he was facing Keith. “Look at him. You’ve got him scared shitless.”

Adam blinked. Keith did not deny it.

Ronan grinned and nipped at his boyfriend’s ear. “Jesus fuck Parrish. Gansey would absolutely die over your complete and all-consuming social handicap.”

“I’m not here to socialize. I’m learning.” Adam grumbled, his accent snaking loose.

Ronan placed a kiss at the top of Adam’s head. “No. You’re _surviving_ , dipshit. Just like you always do.”

Adam shrugged and went back to reading. Ronan rolled his eyes but leaned back and closed his eyes contentedly.

Keith was utterly fascinated. He felt like the longer he watched them the closer he came to understanding some small part of the world’s most unknowable man.

He continued watching them throughout the weekend and on the sporadic visits that followed. It was through learning Ronan, that Keith was finally able to learn Adam.

The main thing that he learned, was that Ronan Lynch was the most enigmatic type of open book. He answered every question with complete honesty, but the answers were always chaotic or contradictory.

He was just as sharp and deadly as Adam, but in an emotional way rather than a practical one. His words were jagged, but his heart was soft. Keith could clearly see it in the way he stared after Adam as if they were tethered together by a string. They practically were. A string of _otherness_. A string of shared experience.

It was Ronan who forced Adam to eat and stretch and leave the room and be a human who is capable of doing more than just surviving.

It was Ronan who slowly started filling Adam’s space with useless, comforting things one visit at a time. It was all very casual; a sweatshirt here, a bottle of shampoo there. Things that were small and easily forgotten, but still blatantly left there on purpose and Adam knew it.

Other such magical anomalies akin to Adam’s smartphone eventually reared their heads, but Keith knew enough about Adam and Ronan at that point to not even question it. He was happy to write them off as a byproduct of Ronan’s ‘completely unnecessary amount of money’ as Adam liked to call it.

Ronan was also the one to start dismantling the mail shrine. Every visit he would rip open a new letter and tack up the attached picture or ticketstub or postcard to the bulletin board above Adam’s bed until the room looked like a place meant for staying.

Keith learned about Gansey and Blue and their terribly tragic and anticlimactic romance through offhanded remarks. Of their general indifference toward Henry Cheng and his impractical hairstyle. Of psychic women and Welsh kings and the marvels of being chosen by a ley line.

These bits of information weren’t much, and they didn’t all make sense, but Keith held them close nonetheless. He, like so many before him, was enamored with the strange and grotesque beauty of this patchwork constellation of strangers, two of which weren’t strangers at all.

He never got the exact answers he was looking for, but what he _had_ deduced was this: Ronan and Adam were both life-hardened and world weary, unwilling to let anyone else into their protective circle, but they somehow filled in the gaps in each other. And for Keith, that knowledge was enough of the full story to satiate him while his curiosity ebbed into acceptance and then into quiet companionship. It bloomed in him like a secret until he could laugh and eat and study around Adam Parrish, plus or minus Ronan, and not have it feel even the slightest bit weird.

And when Adam asks him to live with him again the next year, Keith says yes.

Because being The Magician’s roommate makes him just the tiniest bit _other_.

And Keith likes that, a lot.

**Author's Note:**

> Hit me up on tumblr @Retoondant. I don't know what I'm doing over there either. Don't worry.


End file.
